Toward a Linguistic Anthropological Account of Deixis in Interaction: ini and itu in Indonesian...

Colorado Research in Linguistics. June 2009. Vol. 22. Boulder: University of Colorado.

© 2009 by [Author full names as they appear in the author line].

Toward a Linguistic Anthropological Account of Deixis in

Interaction: Ini and Itu in Indonesian Conversation

Nicholas Williams

University of Colorado at Boulder

This paper presents an overview of research on deixis in linguistic anthropology.

In line with other recent deixis theorists (e.g. Hanks), I suggest that deixis has not

yet received sufficient theoretical nor empirical attention. I argue for the

centrality of deixis, and demonstrative reference in particular, to an

understanding of the fundamentally social and interactional nature of linguistic

meaning. As an exercise in the analysis of deixis in interaction, I analyze the use

of two nominal demonstratives (ini and itu) in colloquial Indonesian

conversation. These demonstratives occur in what are known as “placeholder

uses,” frequently in the context of a “word search.” Several instances of

placeholder demonstrative use are analyzed, showing that differing types of

“access” (perceptual, cognitive, social) (Hanks 2009) to the referent, as well as

distinct indexical grounds, are what distinguish the meaning and use of these two

demonstratives. These findings point to the importance of interactional data in

the analysis of basic linguistic meaning.

1. Introduction: Indexicality, deixis and a theory of linguistic “meaning”

What pervades all work in linguistic anthropology, from Boas to

Silverstein and beyond, is the attempt to articulate the role of language with

respect to culture and to understand what linguistic forms and/or practices mean

(all problematic terms, as it turns out). What do linguistic forms/practices mean

and how is this reflective of or reflected in the culture? This central problem has

been approached in a number of ways over the years. Early linguists such as Boas

and Greenberg worked from the “language is culture” approach, using recently

developed conceptual tools (“phonemes,” “morphemes” and “syntax”) to describe

the grammatical structure of “exotic” languages, particularly those native to North

America. Based on the assumption that “language is culture”, these linguists

masqueraded as anthropologists, “claim[ing] to be doing something

anthropological by analyzing grammar” (Duranti 2003). However, their focus,

and the focus of the long tradition of structural and generative linguists to follow,

was not so much cultural meaning in the anthropological sense, but rather a far

narrower conception of linguistic meaning or semantics as propositional content

and truth-values. This “semantico-referential” approach to meaning takes the

“symbol” as its prime object of interest. Symbols are characterized by their

arbitrary association of the “signified” with the “signifier.” Symbols or pairings of

signifier and signified (later “form-meaning pairs”) are pervasive in language and,

in much of linguistics, typically assumed to be the unique characteristic of

language that sets it apart from other semiotic systems.

Colorado Research in Linguistics, Volume 22 (2009)

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In the groundbreaking 1976 paper “Shifters, Linguistic Categories and

Cultural Description,” Michael Silverstein set an agenda for linguistic

anthropologists by redefining “meaning” in anthropological inquiry. Building on

the work of Peirce and others in semiotics, Silverstein provides a set of tools for

understanding the role of language in society, with particular reference to how

low-level linguistic forms and micro-practices (or “speech events”) are linked to

“culture” or larger, macro-level processes of meaning-making. This perspective is

presented in stark contrast to both the traditional semantico-referential approach

and to the Austinian “speech acts” approach. Silverstein finds fault with the

traditional semantic approach to meaning for its narrow focus on symbols,

“traditionally spoken of as the fundamental kind of linguistic entity” (p. 27). If we

are to understand language as a vehicle for the expression of cultural meanings,

we will have to acknowledge additional sign types other than the symbol,

including the icon and the index. While Austin’s and related approaches to

“speech acts” and language use are helpful in refocusing our attention on the

social life of language and away from a narrow view of propositional meaning, it

is flawed in that it assumes a basic level of semantic-referential structure. Onto

this basic layer of meaning, philosophers like Austin and Searle “tack on” the

“performative use” of these basic linguistic categories. According to Silverstein,

this entirely misses the point that reference is itself a performative act. There is

nothing done in language that is not performative. If anything, reference is a

relatively marginal type of action performed through the use of language (but with

help from other semiotic systems such as gesture). This old critique bears

reconsideration in light of much recent work in “interactional linguistics” which

discusses the interactional “use” of various linguistic and/or grammatical

“resources” to perform “actions” in conversation. We will leave this issue aside

for the moment to examine the rest of Silverstein’s theory. However, the notion of

reference as a performative speech act will be important later on and we will

return to it.

As an alternative to this traditional, symbol-obsessed, semantico-

referential and proposition-based mode of analysis, Silverstein proposes an

approach to meaning in language that focuses on the index, “those signs where the

occurrence of a sign vehicle token bears a connection of understood spatio-

temporal contiguity to the occurrence of the entity signaled” (p. 27), the meaning

of which “always involves some aspect of the context in which the sign occurs”

(p. 11). As we will see, this understanding of the index allows for a

reinterpretation of all kinds of speech events (including referential speech events)

as indexical of some element(s) of the “context in which they occur.” For

Silverstein, this refocusing will ultimately lead us to the “most important aspect of

the ‘meaning’ of speech” (p. 12).

In addition to broadening our attention from the semantico-referential to

the larger more encompassing field of indexical “meaning” in “culture,” what we

gain from Silverstein’s approach is a far more nuanced understanding of the index

itself, that most important tool for understanding links between language and

Toward a linguistic anthropological account of deixis in

interaction: ini and itu in Indonesian conversation

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context. Using the cross-cutting dimensions of presupposing creative and

referential non-referential, four distinct types of indexes are identified and

discussed. The four types are summarized in the following chart, from Silverstein

(1976):

Of particular interest to Silverstein (1976, 2003) and much later

scholarship that draws on the notion of indexicality (e.g. Ochs 1990, 1992, Inoue

2004, Bucholtz 2011, many others) are the “non-referential” indexes, especially

those non-referential “creative (performative)” ones. Ochs’ (1990) article further

developed this concept of the non-referential performative index, adding an

additional dimension, direct/indirect. Sharing some similarity to Silverstein’s

(2003) indexical order, this notion of direct/indirect indexes helped further our

understanding of the link between performed social identities (e.g. gender) and

linguistic practices (e.g. Japanese sentence-final particles). As Ochs’ pointed out,

it is not the case that sentence-final particles in Japanese directly index being-a-

woman or her femininity, but rather that such particles index an “affective

stance,” which then indexes a type of “female voice” in Japanese speech. In this

way Japanese sentence-final particles indirectly index gender (conceived of as a

performed and socially constructed category of identity). This work is

foundational to our contemporary understanding of the links between macro-level

social categories and micro-level linguistic practices. However, this is just one

direction to take Silverstein’s ideas.

In the linguistic anthropological literature of the “third paradigm” (Duranti

2003), less attention has been given to the referential side of Silverstein’s

diagram, and even less to the referential presupposing top left corner. What we

find in this area are issues typically left to linguists, taken up by semanticists and

sometimes pragmaticists, or those scholars probably categorizable in Duranti’s

(2003) second paradigm. The most notable and well known example of

“referential presupposing” indexes is “deixis.” Variously defined by different

authors, “deixis” for Silverstein seems to mean “spatio-temporal deixis,” mainly

demonstratives and tense. As he describes it, deixis is “maximally presupposing,

in that the contextual conditions are required in some appropriate configuration

for proper indexical reference,” and “some aspect of the context … is fixed and

presupposed” (p. 34). When using a “deictic” expression (e.g. English this or that,


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here or there), speakers make reference to cognitively or perceptually

“accessible” (Hanks 1990) objects (real or abstract). For Silverstein, such

accessible objects “exist” for both speaker and addressee and are thus

“presupposed,” “otherwise the use of the deictic token is inappropriate” (p. 33).

Since Silverstein’s landmark account of “shifters” and indexicality as

crucial parts of the theory of cultural meaning making, a fair amount of progress

has been made on that neglected upper left corner of the index diagram. In

particular, William Hanks (1990, 1992, passim) has argued for a more complex

understanding of deictic reference that takes into account not only the object of

reference (Hanks’ “denotatum”), but also the “indexical ground” and the relation

between the two. For Hanks and others (e.g. Agha 1996), use of deixis is not

necessarily presupposing, but rather constitutive of the interactional context of the

utterance. Agha, for instance, argues, “Deictic spatialization effects are not the

outcome of ‘coding’ relationships between deictic categories and preexisting

spatial realities” (p. 679). That is, deictic expressions do not necessarily (en)code

presupposed notions of spatial reality, but rather might be considered more

“creative” (in the sense of Silverstein 1976). As Agha puts it, “deictic usage

indexically situates spatial representations in relation to contextual variables

whose values are only specified during the course of discursive interaction” (my

emphasis). That is, what is presupposed in an act of deictic reference is itself only

specified within an instance of situated (talk-in-)interaction, typically through

“co(n)textual superposition.”

In the remainder of this paper I will further explore the category of deixis

as it fits into Silverstein’s broader theory of indexicality. Rather than relegate it to

“traditional linguists” who are likely to give it a semantico-referential treatment, I

argue that (spatial) deixis is a crucial feature of situated language use in

interaction that requires serious consideration by (linguistic) anthropologists.

Deictics play a crucial role in connecting instances of language use to the

immediate and broader context. Deictic reference is accomplished through co-

production with other speakers and is accompanied by use of multi-modal signs

(gestures, eye gaze), which are often crucial for interpretation. Through the use of

data from video recorded conversation in Indonesian, I will argue that deictic

practice works to constitute (rather than simply reflect or encode spatial aspects

of) the immediate context of interaction. I will also show that, in line with Hanks

(1990), what is fundamental to deictic forms is “access” rather than any spatial

notion. Finally, I will suggest additional pragmatic effects of deictic use in

interaction (in Indonesian) that might be interpretable with reference to notions of

indexicality and stance (Du Bois 2007). In this way I aim to situate deictic

“referential practices” (Hanks 1990) firmly within a linguistic anthropological

approach to language and meaning.

2. Approaches to deixis



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Deixis has suffered a history of marginalization in the study of language,

alternately being handed off from philosophy to semantics, taken up by

pragmatics and occasionally linguistic anthropologists. As a phenomenon it has

been largely ignored by most generative and descriptive-typological linguists

alike, getting only a cursory treatment in the majority of reference grammars. This

is not to say that deixis is lacking a significant literature, which it is not. The

tradition of studies of deixis dates back to Buhler (1934), at least, and has been

followed up by Lyons (1977, 1982), Fillmore (1982), Weissenborn and Klein

(1982), Levinson (1983, 1994, passim), and Anderson and Keenan (1985), among

others. These studies represent mostly philosophical as well as semantic and/or

pragmatic approaches to deixis and deictic use. Even by 1983, as Levinson states

in his Pragmatics textbook, theoretical approaches to deixis were underdeveloped.

Since the publication of that textbook, and particularly in the past two decades

(1990 – 2010), there has been somewhat of a surge in studies of deixis. This new

literature has come from a number of fields, in particular linguistic anthropology

(Hanks 1990, 1992, 2005, 2009, etc., Agha 1996), conversational analysis and

interactional linguistics (M. Goodwin 1990, C. Goodwin 1999a, 1999b) and

cognitive psycholinguistic approaches (Levinson 1996). Additionally, more

traditional descriptive semantico-referential and typological approaches have

produced accounts of deictics, particularly demonstratives (Anderson and Keenan

1985, Himmelmann 1996, Diessel 1999, Dixon 2003). A recent overview of the

this literature is found in Sidnell (1998). Schegloff’s (1972) paper on “formulating

place” should also be mentioned here, as it informed some of the work on deixis

in interaction, although it does not address deixis directly.

While in the past few years a number of linguists have published studies

of demonstratives and/or deixis in particular languages that draw on these

interactionally and ethnographically informed approaches (e.g. Bickel 1997,

Enfield 2003a, 2003b, Hayashi and Yoon 2006), other work is continuing to be

produced which takes the old, simply semantic and problematic view of deixis

criticized by Hanks (1990, 2009) among others. It will be useful now to briefly

summarize past approaches and previous understandings of deixis, as well as the

anthropological and interactional critique. This will set us up to look closely at

some examples of Indonesian deictic demonstrative use in interaction.

Traditional approaches to deixis are mainly descriptive and typological in

nature. Fillmore and Lyons first discussed deixis from a semantico-referential

perspective and contributed to our basic understanding of deixis as a phenomenon

distinct from context-referring phenomena such as anaphora and indexicality.

More recently, the more “traditional” descriptive-typological approach has been

interested in cataloguing the cross-linguistic variation in deictic forms and

functions, delineating parameters for universal and language-specific features of

deictic systems. This work is exemplified in Weissenborn and Klein (1982),

Anderson and Keenan (1985), Himmelmann (1996), Diessel (1999) and Dixon

(2003), among others. This work has increased our understanding of what can be

encoded in deictic systems in a diverse set of languages, thus providing a base


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from which to further investigate the everyday use of such forms. Himmelmann

(1996) is a good example of a study of the functions of diverse deictic

(demonstrative) systems across a number of languages.

However, there is reason to believe that this well-developed typology of

deixis, as well as the “functional” approach to the “use” of these “forms,” is

problematic. If we recall Silverstein’s (1976) warning, it is not the case that

certain semantico-referential aspects of language “structure” are already there, to

be left to the formal semanticists and descriptive linguists to discuss, and that

these “resources” are then put to “use” in interaction. Instead, deictic reference is

just one type of language use, one type of performative speech act. While it is true

that deictic practices involve certain pragmatic effects, it is misunderstanding the

phenomenon to separate the basic “meaning” of the forms from their “use in

interaction.” Enfield (2003a) has shown very clearly that video data of situated

talk-in-interaction is crucial for an accurate analysis of the semantically encoded

aspects of demonstratives’ meanings in Lao. In the case of Lao, it turns out that

what is “encoded” semantically is not the expected “proximal” vs. “distal”

distinction, but rather a more basic notion of NOT HERE for the “distal” form,

while the “proximal” form has no semantically encoded meaning. Agha (1996)

also cautions us against relying on seemingly intuitive and straightforward notions

of spatial meanings “encoded” in deictic forms, arguing instead that deictics

project “spatial schemas” which are only interpreted and achieve “spatialization

effects” through usage in which higher-order superpositions contextualize deictic

usage. That is, “aspects of context routinely superimpose spatial construals on

deictic usage” (p. 644).

This perspective calls to mind, and in fact builds directly upon, the work

of Hanks (1990, 1992, 2009 and passim), which provides us with a new way of

understanding deixis. Situated in a phenomenological approach to interaction and

grammatical practices (including deictic referential practice), and incorporating

rich, ethnographic details relating to the broadly defined context of use, Hanks

(1990) brings together a new approach to the study of deictic reference, one which

presents even more fundamental problems with the traditional, descriptive-

typological approach. Of particular relevance here is the notion of context and the

features of that context “encoded” in or relevant to the interpretation of deictic

use. In his 2009 article Hanks presents the following simplified diagram to

summarize his approach to (spatial) deixis:

While previous approaches have focused largely on the object of reference, the

denotatum, defined as locatable at some relative distance (“proximal,” “medial”



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or “distal”) from the speaker (or “deictic center”), Hanks explodes the

possibilities by explicitly formalizing the three pieces of any occasion of deictic

reference. Thus, any occasion of deictic reference points to a denotatum or object

of reference (the figure), while also specifying the type of “indexical ground” of

reference and the relationship between the two. This is reminiscent of Du Bois’

(2007) “stance triangle,” which is itself characterized by three reference points,

the “stance object” and two separate but dialogically related subjects, connected

in one act of stance-taking by relations of alignment, evaluation and positioning.

The similarities between these conceptual frameworks will be left here, but a

comparison and potential unification of these frameworks deserves much

attention.

What is crucial to understand about Hanks’ approach to deictic reference

is the increased number of variables and features relevant for an interpretation of

deictic use. Hanks (2009) is strongly critical of the “spatialist, egocentric” bias in

studies of deixis. Rather than understanding deixis as defined in relation to the

here-now-speaker deictic center, including the reference to an indexical ground as

a relevant parameter allows for different types of deictic reference, including not

only “speaker oriented,” but other more “socio-centric” orientations such as

“addressee oriented” or “speaker and addressee oriented.” Relatively

underexplored is the cross-linguistic variation in categorization of the object of

deictic reference as, for example, in terms of animacy, gender, number, etc.

Finally, and most important for the Indonesian data we are about to see, the

relation between the indexical ground/origo and the object of reference “may be

spatial, distinguishing for instance relative proximity, inclusion or orientation. But

space is just one sphere of context. Other spheres attested in deictic systems

include time, perception, memory versus anticipation,” etc. What is fundamental

in interpreting instances of deictic reference is the type of “access” indexed by the

form. This “access” may be cognitive, perceptual or socially defined.

With this background in mind, let us shift to an analysis of some actual

examples of deictic reference. The data to be considered come from video

recordings of three speakers of Indonesian living in Boulder, CO. The speakers

are all bilingual in English and Indonesian.

3. Demonstrative use in interaction

A recent addition to the literature on deixis in interaction is Hayashi and

Yoon’s (2006, reprinted as Hayashi and Yoon 2010) work on demonstratives and

“word formulation trouble” cross linguistically. These authors show that one

overlooked and under-appreciated interactional use of deictics (here

demonstratives, specifically) is as placeholders in the course of the interactional

activity known as “word search.” They delineate three types of such use:

placeholder demonstratives (which fill a syntactic slot and maintain the “need

for progressivity” and allow speakers to complete their turn without completing

the act of reference), avoidance use (placeholders used to avoid producing an


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impolite or unacceptable referent) and interjective hesitators (like english “uhm”

and Spanish “este”, used to indicate occurrence of a word search but not filling

any syntactic or semantic role in the utterance). Hayashi and Yoon show that

placeholder demonstratives are pervasive across a range of languages (Chinese,

Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, Finnish, Maliseet-Passamaquoddy, among others).

The prevalence of demonstratives, in particular, used in this type of interactional

trouble is attributed to their “pointing function and the invocation of participant

access” (Hayashi and Yoon 2006). Their account draws heavily on Hanks’s

(1990, 1992) analysis of deictic usage, which posits “access” (perceptual,

cognitive, social) as the fundamental feature of demonstratives and (spatial) deixis

more generally. They show that different demonstrative forms index different

types of participant access to knowledge of the intended referent. In Korean, for

example, medial and distal forms are both used as placeholders during word

search. However, while the medial demonstrative indexes “shared access”

(indexical ground = speaker + addressee), the distal demonstrative indexes

“remote access for speaker” (indexical ground = speaker [only]). These

differences in “participant access” follow directly to the Hanks-ian notions of

relational type and origo or indexical ground, and, in turn, have important

consequences for the nature of the following interaction. As Hayashi and Yoon

show, the “shared access” medial forms lead to more overt other-participant

involvement in the word search (through offering a possible completion and/or

maintaining sustained attention through eye-gaze or other bodily and linguistic

practices), while the “remote (from speaker) access” distal forms result in less

other-participant involvement and minimal “uh-huh” types of responses.

While Hayashi and Yoon have drawn our attention to the crucial role

played by demonstratives and deictic expressions in talk-in-interaction, one

potential drawback of this approach is that we are still starting with form, some

kind of basic underlying structural distinctions, and then investigating the “use” of

these forms in interaction to discover something about “language use in

interaction.” As many have shown and Enfield (2003a) has so articulately

demonstrated, the home of language is face-to-face interaction and it is in

interactional data that we will discover the basic encoded semantic distinctions,

not only how those distinctions are “put to use” as “interactional resources.” With

this in mind, let us turn to some examples of Indonesian demonstrative use in

interaction.

4. Indonesian placeholder demonstratives

Like English, Lao and many other languages, Indonesian has a two-term

adnominal demonstrative system (this and that), traditionally described as

“proximal” vs. “distal” (e.g. Sneddon 2006). The forms in Indonesian are ini and

itu. However, this is just one part of a more elaborate system of (spatial) deixis in

Indonesian which includes a three-way locative demonstrative system (sini, situ,



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sana, roughly: ‘here’, ‘there’ (medial?), ‘over there’ (distal?)), two adverbial

demonstratives (begini and begitu, roughly: ‘like this’ and ‘like that’), as well as

several other miscellaneous forms including (at least) anu (from Javanese,

roughly: ‘uhm’/‘whatchamacallit’), nih and tuh (“discourse particles,”

grammaticalized forms of ini and itu, with elusive meanings and functions). For

the time being we will have to limit ourselves to ini and itu, and in particular,

their use as placeholders in the context of word searches. It should be noted that

the precise characterization of ini and itu semantics, as well as their function in

various forms of discourse and conversational interaction, requires further study.

Previous work has initiated this (Himmelmann 1996, Sneddon 2006), but these

studies have made limited use of conversational interactional data and do not

distinguish the conventional semantics of these forms as from their pragmatic

force.

The following examples, taken from Wouk (2005), demonstrate the

placeholder use of ini and itu in relatively straightforward contexts.

(1) terus mengenai hadiah-hadiah-nya itu, apa

then about REDUP-gift:GEN DEM what

dari e: e itu, e Karang Taruna Nana sendiri

from uh uh DEM uh Karang Taruna Nana self

"Then as for the presents, (were they) what

from uh uh that, uh your own Karang Taruna

(name of an organization)."

In line 2 the distal demonstrative itu serves as a placeholder for the noun Karang

Taruna Nana sendiri. In this example several markers of repair occur, including

apa and e: (3x). Quite frequently instances of placeholder repair are encountered

in which there is no other indication of repair or difficulty recalling the word. For

example,

(2) o: kalo gitu udah ini dong, lancar

oh if like:this already DEM EMPH fluent

bahasa inggris-nya

language English-GEN

"Oh, in that case (he’s) already this, fluent

in English"

Here the “proximal” demonstrative ini is used as a placeholder for the adjective

lancar. We see, then, that placeholder demonstratives in Indonesian may stand in

for nouns and adjectives (or even verbs or parts of words, not shown here), and


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that these placeholder “repairs” may be produced fluently (as in example (2))

without any indication of word formulation trouble aside from the use of the

demonstrative. An analysis of the differing functions of placeholders in fluent

non-word search production is outside the scope of this paper, but ultimately will

have to be accounted for. In fact, a broader approach to demonstratives in all

occasions of use will likely shed light on both what is semantically encoded and

what pragmatic implicatures underlie the diverse observable occasions of use.

Following below is an example of prototypical placeholder demonstrative

use in a word search from the data collected for this study. Note here that in line

(1) we see a fluently produced speaker-completed placeholder demonstrative. Of

more interest here is the use of ini in line (3), where the speaker’s involvement in

a word search is clearly indicated by the repetition of ini, the initially cut off

production of in- and the lengthened vowel [i::] on the second production, the

micro-pause in line (4) and the self-addressed ‘whatchamacallit’question, apa

nama-nya? at the end of line (3).

(3)

1 A: ya udah ini aja, tari-saman kita

yeah already this just k.o. dance we

latiha:n. [.hh

practice

“yeah ok, ((let's)) just ((do)) this, tari

saman, we(('ll)) practice,"

2 L: [m'm=

mhm

"mhm,"

3 A: =sama buka in- ini:: >apa nama-nya(˚)?<

also open thi- this what name-GEN

"and open in-, ini::, what's it called?"

{ [A directs gaze at V, far left] }

4 (.)

5 V: booth=

booth

"booth,"

6 A: =booth .hh ntar makanannya:: (.3) kita

booth later food-NYA we

{ ^[V nods] }



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masak ra- rame-ra↑me juga

cook ra- all.together also

bisa ama [yokke

can with Y.

"booth, then we can also cook the food all

together, ((along)) with Yokke."

In this excerpt the participants are discussing what they would like to do at

an upcoming cultural event. They have been discussing types of dance.

Apparently they have settled on the tari saman. In line (1), A indicates that this

topic of conversation is settled and that they should move (ya udah might be

glossed as "yeah enough already," but without the negative connotation associated

with that English phrase). In line (3) A continues with another turn, suggesting

another thing that they might do at the event. While a demonstrative like ini alone

might not typically indicate a word search, in this instance the nature of A's

production of ini indicates that she is engaged in word search. Her first attempt is

cut short (in-). In the second production of this proximal demonstrative the final

vowel is lengthened quite extensively. This type of "sound stretch" is typical of

word searches (Hayashi 2003, Goodwin and Goodwin 1986). Immediately

following this use of the demonstrative, A utters the common phrase apa

namanya, somewhat equivalent to English whatchamacallit, though here it is

functioning more like an "interjective hesitator," rather than a placeholder. At the

same time, A directs her gaze directly at V, indicating that she is inviting

assistance from V for the completion of her word search (see figure 21). The

micro-pause following her turn serves to open up the floor and allow V to enter

into the word search activity in progress. V's suggestion for a completion is

agreed upon by A. A's recycling of the previously searched-for referent, booth, is

immediately followed by a quick, but perceptible, nod by V directed at A. This

series of gestures and vocal practices points to the careful attention that

participants pay to the ongoing activity. In a series of alternating turns, A and V

manage to co-construct and complete this word search activity. Most importantly

here is the observation that the speaker, A, maintains directed eye-gaze with the

recipient, V, throughout the activity. We can conclude that word search in

Indonesian at least has the possibility to begin as a multi-participant activity.

Word search is not necessarily initiated through the "characteristic" diversion of

eye-gaze and production of a "thinking face," as suggested by Goodwin and

Goodwin (1986).

1 In the video stills, speaker V is on the far left, L is in the middle, and A is on the far right.


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Figure 2.

A: [sama buka in- ini:: >apa namanya(˚)?<

Of crucial importance here is the use of ini and how we are to account for

its use in the context of the word search. While it is clear from the discussion so

far that this (and probably any) use of a placeholder demonstrative in Indonesia is

uninterpretable without consideration of accompanying multi-modal practices

(particularly eye gaze), the question remains, what is the function of ini and what

does its “meaning” contribute to the unfolding interaction? What can this instance

of ini used as a placeholder tell us about the indexical ground, the object of

reference and the relation between the two that are “encoded” or “schematized”

(Agha 1996) in the deictic form in general?

The occurrence of an associated gesture and directed eye gaze between

participants here is crucial. These multi-modal aspects of the interaction

superimpose (in the sense of Agha 1996) an interpretation of the deictic reference

as accessible to both speaker and addressee. However, it is not clear that the



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demonstrative form itself includes addressee in its indexical ground. In the next

example we will see how ini can be used in the context of a word search,

accompanied by different gaze and gesture practices, to index speaker-only

access. We therefore conclude that only speaker is included in the indexical

ground for ini. As is typical for an adnominal demonstrative and is clear from the

nominal element that replaces ini, the denotatum type or object of reference is a

‘thing’ (as opposed to ‘region’, for example, as for the deictic term “here”). The

relational type here appears to be “inclusive,” meaning that the speaker has access

to knowledge of the intended referent. Following Hanks and Hayashi and Yoon,

we could represent this schematically as:

Table 1.

Form Denotatum type Relational type Indexical ground

ini ‘the one’ Inclusive speaker(+addressee?)

From this characterization of ini as making reference to a thing in an

inclusive relationship to the speaker, the implication follows that this

demonstrative, ini, indexes immediate access (of the speaker) to knowledge of the

intended referent. As seen in the example above, this indication of speaker-access

can be adjusted to include speaker and hearer access to knowledge of the referent

through accompanying use of gesture and mutually directed eye gaze.

Example (4) shows another use of ini as a placeholder, in this case used by

the speaker to indicate speaker-only access and avoid overt other-participant

involvement in the word search.

(4)

1 A: o- isn't it crazy? dan orang-orang di swiss

{ English } and RED-person in Switzerland

gitu-gitu ya? (.5)

like.that-RED DP

2 mereka ↑tuh- e::: ini lho, apa nama-nya? e: setuju

they DEM uh:: this DP what name-GEN uh agree

3 (.3) untuk bayar tax lebih mahal. (.5) karena

mereka tahu bahwa de[ngan bayar tax

they know that with(by) pay tax

"oh, isn't it crazy? and people in Switzerland

((and places)) like that, you know? they, uh::, ini

lho, what's it called? uh:, agree to pay more

expensive [higher] taxes, because they know that with

paying taxes..."


14

5 V: [tax-nya balik lagi ke

[tax-NYA return again to

mere[ka:

"the tax ((will)) go back to them again."

6 A: [uh'uh mereka dapat servis: gitu

[uh-huh 3P.PL get service like.that

"uh-huh, uh-huh, they get service, you know."

The excerpt in (4) presents an example of word search, again initiated by

A, in which eye-gaze is directed away from the co-participants, resulting in A's

own eventual production of the searched-for referent. Note that in fragment (6), V

engages in co-participant completion to help the talk move forward. Here no such

assistance is invited, and A ends up completing her own word search. The other

two participants display understanding that A is involved in a word search

through their uninterrupted eye-gaze directed at A. So, while V and L do not

participate vocally in the activity, their eye-gaze serves as an acceptable and

appropriate response to the ongoing word search. In this case an interruption or

attempted completion by one of these co-participants would indicate a lack of

attention to A's current activity expressed through both talk and diverted eye-

gaze. Their silence and directed eye-gaze is thus a salient form of participation in

the interaction, while simultaneously they acknowledge A’s indication of speaker-

only access.

In line (2) A begins the vocal component of her word search with the

"filler" e:::, immediately followed by the proximal demonstrative ini. However,

an examination of the video data indicates that A has already diverted her gaze by

the end of the tuh-. Prior to this, A's gaze is directed at the two participants (V in

particular - see figure 3). The (-) at the end of tuh here indicates an abrupt,

probably glottal stop, closure, cutting short the production of this form tuh. This

abrupt stop, along with a raised intonation, might itself be the first vocal

indication of a word search. During the rest of the word search A maintains eye-

gaze away from the other participants (see figure 4). During the (.3) second pause

following setuju, the first word in her completion of the previous word search, A

shifts her gaze back to the other two participants. This excerpt clearly

demonstrates the role of gaze in the life of a word search. Eye-gaze can be used

strategically by the speaker to either invite (example 3) or discourage (example 4)

co-participant involvment in the completion of the search. It is not the case

(contra Goodwin and Goodwin 1986), that word searches are characteristically

defined by diverted eye-gaze. The diversion or maintenance of mutual eye-gaze

between speaker and hearers during word search difficulty are resources used by

the speaker for the production of different types of interaction. Such multi-modal

practices work to superimpose particular interpretations of deictic reference. In

this case, direction of eye gaze reinforces the indexing of speaker-only access,



15

while in example (3) directed eye gaze + a pointing gesture worked to include the

addressee(s) in the indexical ground and thus index shared-access.

Figure 3.

A:o- isn't it crazy? dan orang-orang di swiss gitu-gitu ya? (.5)

{ English } and person-RED in Switzerlandlike.that-RED DP


16

Figure 4.

2 mereka ↑tuh- e::: ini lho, apa nama-nya? e: setuju (.3)

3P.PLDEM uh this DP what name-GEN uh agree

3 untuk bayar tax lebih mahal. (.5) karena mereka tahu bahwa

to/for pay tax more expensive because 3P.PL know that

4 de[ngan bayar tax

wi[th pay tax

With these two examples, we have tried to make three claims: (1)

demonstratives in Indonesian are not simply reflective of the immediate spatial

context of the utterance, but rather they contribute to the work of constituting the

context by indexing particular types of participant access to knowledge of the

intended referent; (2) the particular type of participant access indexed follows

directly from the indexical ground, denotatum type and relation between these



17

two features encoded by demonstrative; and (3) these characteristics of the

schema (Agha 1996) of the deictic form are recoverable from the interaction and

should not (and cannot) be based only on exophoric, supposedly “basic”

situational use of demonstratives to refer to perceptually accessible objects. It is

NOT the case that “basic” spatial meanings map metaphorically onto non-spatial

“endophoric” contexts. Instead, the “meaning” of deictic reference forms is

constructed in multi-modal interaction.

A final example of the “distal” demonstrative itu used as a placeholder

will help to reinforce these claims. (5)

1 V: mbak Yeny mbak Ully malah(an) nari (.)

miss Y. miss U. in.fact dance

buat, (.2)

for

"Y ((and)) U actually dance for ..."

2 A: [i:ya

yeah

"yeah"

{A directs gaze to V}

3 L: [ehh [tunggu mbak=

eh2 wait miss

3

"hey! hold on,"

{A's gaze is directed to L}

4 V: [itu.

that

"itu"

5 A: =buat [iya spanyol.

for yeah spain/spanish

"... for, yeah, spanish ((dance))."

{A briefly directs eye gaze to V again}

2 ehh is a frequent attention grabber or marker of interruption. That is, ehh is a resource used to

"take the floor" during a conversation. 3 mbak and other address terms are used for second person reference. Her the reference is to A, to

whom L's utterance is addressed.


18

In this case V experiences trouble formulating the word spanyol,

eventually supplied by A in line 5. To indicate her involvement in a word search,

V first produces two brief pauses, a micro-silence followed by a slightly longer

(.2) second silence in line 1. This word search differs substantially from the types

of word searches involving ini that we have examined previously. In the previous

cases, both recipients indicated acknowledgement of the word search through

different modes of involvement. In example (3) this involved co-participant

completion in the production of the searched-for referent. In example (4) this

acknowledgement was indicated by the maintenance of eye-gaze on the part of the

recipients. Co-participant completion was not a relevant or appropriate form of

interaction in (4) because of A's eye-gaze diversion. By diverting her eye-gaze

away from the recipients, A indicated that she did not desire assistance in the

completion of her word search. On the other hand, V's word search in (5) is

interrupted by L's turn at line 3. This indicates that L is not attending to V's

experience of word formulation trouble. While A does eventually complete the

search through a form of co-participant completion in line 5, this is uttered at a

much lower volume than the previous discourse. A also has begun shifting her

gaze away from V toward L in response to L's abrupt interruption and attempt to

take the floor. A’s offering of a candidate for co-participant completion here

might follow from some kind of pressure to complete the reference. While

placeholders in Indonesian are used for “vague reference” and “avoidance use”

(e.g. the frequent use of itu-nya (DEM-3.POSS) to refer to a male sexual organ, the

actual term obviously to be avoided in polite speech), this would not seem to

work in this case because the speakers are discussing what kind of dance they will

perform in an upcoming event. To refer to the type of dance vaguely with a

placeholder like itu is dispreferred in this context since explicit reference to the

dance-to-be-performed is needed.

If we try to recover the three elements of this deictic form from this

example, it seems that in contrast to ini, itu is defined by its non-immediate

relational type between a thing (denotatum type) and the speaker (indexical

ground). We could schematize this as follows:

Table 2.

Form Denotatum type Relational type Indexical ground

itu ‘the one’ non-immediate speaker

In this case the relation of non-immediacy with reference to the speaker

indexes “remoteness of access” for the speaker. Since the hearer/addressee is not

included in the indexical ground (as with ini), the deictic reference might be

interpreted as remote or not to the addressee. In terms of involvement in the

ongoing word search and attempt at reference, this means that the addressee may

or may not directly participate. Thus, as we see in example (5), the addressee (A)

becomes involved through directed eye gaze and eventually offering a possible



19

completion (spanyol). However, this leaves the potential for itu-placeholders to be

“filled in” by the speaker alone, without any involvement from the addressee(s).

Clearly more examples are needed to draw firm conclusions regarding the

characteristic features of these two adnominal demonstratives. However, this

paper has shown that the “meaning” of demonstratives is not necessarily based on

exophoric spatial uses, but can instead be shown to follow from their use in

situated interaction. Future work will have to show whether these conclusions are

valid if we consider the wider range of demonstrative uses across situations,

activities and types of discourse. We tentatively hypothesize that these findings

regarding the meaning of Indonesian demonstratives when used as placeholders

will extend to exophoric spatial uses as well, thereby undermining the supposed

spatial basis of demonstrative meaning and use (cf. Hanks passim).

5. Toward a (linguistic anthropological) account of deixis in interaction

In this paper I have shown that an anthropological approach (broadly

conceived) to demonstrative use, and deixis in general, is needed to account for

the “meaning” and interpretation of this important part of language. Deixis

represents a core example of the contextualized and contextualizing nature of

linguistic practice and meaning. Detailed micro-analysis of demonstrative use in

naturally-occurring interaction can shed light on their meaning(s) and lead to

insights unavailable based on the analysis of hypothetical examples. The analysis

presented here aims to promote the claim that language is socially constituted and

an “emergent” product use in real-time interaction. Further evidence will come

from more detailed analyses of language use and social interaction.

In addition to the semantic and pragmatic “meanings” encoded in these

demonstrative forms, it seems quite likely that this practice of placeholder use

does additional work for participants in interaction. What I would like to suggest

here is that use of a placeholder demonstrative as a type of repair shares

something in common with the other-initiated repair discussed by Besnier (2010)

in his book on the production of gossip on Nukulaelae atoll. In this work Besnier

suggests that the use of non-referential forms (like “he is such a …”) in initial

reference position, which evokes other-initiated repair (“who?”, i.e. “who is

he?”), works to invite co-participant production of gossip, which ultimately

removes culpability and blame from the gossip-initiator. Similarly, in the case of

placeholder demonstrative use, the use of such a vague reference form (akin to a

“recognitional” form, cf. Himmelmann 1996) in what looks like “initial” position,

occasionally evokes other-participant repair and/or involvement in the word

search. This allows speakers to invite other-participant involvement in the

production of reference, a fundamental feature of language use and everyday talk

and interaction. This avoidance of speaker-only production of reference might

relate to the relative rights of speakers and addressees to do reference. This might

have to do with shared knowledge among the participants about others’ epistemic


20

rights. For example, in example (3) V is invited to make reference to the booth

because she is much more involved in the preparations for the cultural event being

discussed than either A or L is. V, then, holds greater epistemic rights to do the

reference in this case, and A’s use of a placeholder demonstrative might be

interpreted as an attempt to “downgrade” her own epistemic rights inherent to first

position in the adjacency pair (Heritage and Raymond 2005).

The immediately preceding analysis represents the results of a pilot study

into the meaning and use of demonstratives in Indonesian conversation. Future

research will need to provide a more comprehensive account of demonstrative

meaning, including the relationship between the interactional functions discussed

here and the apparent “exophoric” functions commonly proposed as the “basic”

function of demonstratives. Future work will require a greater amount of data as

well as a more ethnographic approach. Hanks has drawn linguistic anthropology’s

attention to deixis and referential practice as a phenomenon of importance to the

field. However, we are still lacking descriptions of deixis and referential practice

in a wide sample of languages. Echoing Hanks (2009), this paper makes the call

for greater attention to deixis in linguistic anthropology and other approaches to

the study of language (use) and social interaction.



21

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